President Joe Biden said Wednesday he pressed Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the origins of COVID-19 during their lengthy November phone call, a revelation that comes after two months of the White House refusing to say if Biden had raised the critical concern.
During his first White House press conference since March of last year, Biden was pressed on why he hadn’t pushed Xi to be more transparent about the pandemic’s origins and whether his reluctance was tied to his son Hunter having business dealings with Chinese state-controlled entities. The president insisted that he did bring up the topic of transparency on the virus’s origins during his call with Xi.
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“The answer is that we did — I did raise the question of transparency. I spent a lot of time with him, and … the fact is that they’re just not being transparent,” Biden said.
Biden was also asked why the White House press staff hadn’t been aware.
“They weren’t with me the entire time,” Biden contended. “Look, I made it clear that I thought that China had an obligation to be more forthcoming on exactly what the source of the virus was and where it came from.”
The White House refused in November to say whether Biden had pressed Xi on COVID-19’s origins during their three-hour virtual conversation that month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said more than 760,000 people in the United States had died during the pandemic at the time — the number now stands at more than 850,000 — and the Chinese government has stonewalled inquiries into how it started.
Biden declined to answer a question on how he would get China to be transparent about COVID-19’s origins in early November, prior to the summit with Xi. White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked just after the summit if Biden asked Xi for China’s help on COVID-19’s origins, and she repeatedly declined to specifically say.
“Well, I would say that the president’s push for the Chinese to … participate more, provide more transparent data and information, we’ve never held back on that front,” Psaki said. “We’ve argued for it publicly. We’ve argued for it at every level. And the president did talk in his meeting about the importance of transparency, which … this is exactly an example of.”
Psaki added, “I think the president has spoken publicly on this a number of times. Our national security officials have conveyed very clearly. I don’t think it’s a secret that’s what we want.”
The Washington Examiner sent the White House a series of questions in November, including whether Biden raised the topic of COVID-19’s origins with Xi, and if not, then why not — and if so, what specifically Biden called upon Xi to do, such as asking China to be more open, to share all the data it has, to open the Wuhan labs for real investigations, and to allow the World Health Organization’s second inquiry to move ahead in China. The Biden administration provided only a vague statement in response at the time.
“The two leaders did talk about both COVID and broader health security issues in terms [of] bringing to an end the current pandemic and the importance of donating vaccines,” a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner. “President Biden also talked about the importance of preventing future pandemics and the important role that transparency plays in addressing global health issues.”
The November readout from the White House about the call did not mention COVID-19 nor its origins, but it said Biden “raised specific transnational challenges where our interests intersect, such as health security.”
The readout from the Chinese side was much longer, but it also made no mention of COVID-19’s origins. China said Xi told Biden, “Response to any major disease must be based on science. Politicizing diseases does no good but only harm.”
China has repeatedly condemned the U.S. search for COVID-19’s origins in China as “politicized” — even as China has baselessly claimed that the virus may have started with the U.S. military. The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in late 2019 in Wuhan, China.
Biden did not discuss COVID-19 in his opening remarks during the summit, and he thanked Xi after the Chinese leader told him that he is “very happy to see my old friend.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke at the Brookings Institution the day after the Biden-Xi call. “When it comes to COVID-19, there are still very real questions about transparency and issues associated with the origins of COVID-19,” Sullivan said. He did not say whether Biden raised COVID-19’s origins with Xi.
A flawed WHO-China joint study from early 2021 contended that a jump from animals to humans was the most likely origin and called the Wuhan lab leak possibility extremely unlikely. But the report was largely dismissed due to a lack of access to key data and Chinese influence over the investigation.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted in July that there was a “premature push” to dismiss the lab escape possibility, but the Chinese government has repeatedly shot down the suggestion of a second investigation.
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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment this summer stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe with “low confidence” that COVID-19 most likely has a natural origin.
Numerous former Trump administration officials, along with House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans, have said a lab leak is COVID-19’s most likely origin. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who sought to shut down the lab leak debate early in the pandemic, recently insisted it is “much more likely” that COVID-19 originated in nature rather than from the Wuhan lab.
